Holzer and Eric Shiner, former director the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, shared stories about the artist Friday during a by-invitation Sotheby’s season-opening event at Holzer’s Palm Beach home. Shiner, now Sotheby’s senior vice president of contemporary art, recently wrote The Impossible Collection of Warholfor publisher Assouline, which opened a store in November in the Royal Poinciana Plaza.

The impression many people have of Warhol as a party animal isn’t entirely accurate, Shiner said. Warhol had a finely tuned sense of what it takes to make 15 minutes of fame last longer. When frequenting haunts such as Studio 54 in New York during the 1970s, he’d have his car drive around until enough paparazzi had accumulated, Shiner said. When they had, he made his grand entrance, stayed for a short while and left.

Holzer, who met Warhol in 1963 and remained friends with him until his death in 1987, said while most of Warhol’s Factory circle were into drugs, Warhol was abstemious. “He was the ultimate enabler,” she said.

When it came to his art, he worked very hard, she said.

Shiner’s book spotlights 100 quintessential Warhol works spanning the breadth of his career. Because of their rarity, value and prestige — and their likely location in a museum or other collection — they could never be assembled by a single collector, the author says.

This week, company representatives are in Miami touching bases with collectors gathered for Art Basel in Miami Beach fair week. Sotheby’s plans to showcase highlights from future sales in Palm Beach and host a luncheon at a private home in February during the weekend of the Norton Museum’s gala, said Lisa Dennison, chairman of Sotheby’s North and South America.

Sotheby’s hired resident Ashley Schiff Ramos as the new head of its Palm Beach office last fall.

“Sotheby’s has always had a presence in Palm Beach,” Ramos said. “But we are definitely increasing the number of events.”

The firm is expanding its Palm Beach territory to take in towns such as Hobe Sound, Jupiter, Wellington and Boca Raton, Dennison said.

“We’re planning a number of events that appeal to different generations,” she said. “The younger generation is a growth area, as well as the blue chip clients we love.”

The company is widening its scope in other ways as well. Since Tad Smith was appointed president and chief executive officer in 2015, the company has stepped up its courtship of collectors who prefer to buy and sell on the private market, Dennison said.

“The truth is there are people who like to buy at auction and people who like to buy privately,” she said. “To be a full-service company to our clients, we need to be both.”

Private sales in the first half of 2017 were up 34 percent compared with the same period last year, reaching $334 million.

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